


Another Day in Paradise

by SuburbanSun



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergent, F/M, The Bad Place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-22 00:04:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9572861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuburbanSun/pseuds/SuburbanSun
Summary: Eleanor was in for an eternity of torture, torment and Trevor down in The Bad Place. This was going to befun.(To clarify: for him. It was going to be fun forhim. Nothing but sheer terror for her.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ariadnes_string](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/gifts).



> Canon divergent-- if Eleanor went back to The Bad Place with Trevor in 1x09.
> 
> Happy Chocolate Box! Hope you enjoy :-)

“This is us, Sweetcheeks,” said Trevor, cocking his head to the side as the train came to an abrupt stop in front of a run-down one-story house. The momentum made Eleanor crash into the seat in front of her. He smirked, and she scowled.

Once she’d straightened up in her seat, she leveled him with a glare. “What, no white picket fence?”

He stood and started to make his way down the aisle without bothering to look back and see if she was following. “We’ve found that the piranha moat adds that little something special.” She didn’t respond. _Okay, maybe one glance back._ When he saw that she was still rooted to her seat, arms crossed over her chest, he huffed an impatient sigh. “You’re not getting any younger, you know.”

She set her jaw defiantly. It was actually kind of cute, in an obnoxious sort of way. “Do people age down here, anyway? Doesn’t the whole ‘eternity’ thing kinda get in the way of that?”

Trevor grinned at her, strolling back up the aisle of the train to where she sat. “We don’t _actually_ age, but every time we look in the mirror, we _think_ we discover a new wrinkle or two.” He held out his hand to her. “Come on. Let’s go see the new digs.”

When her glare finally subsided and she moved to take his hand, he swiped it back and spun around. “Pysch! Loser.” He could practically _feel_ her seething behind him as they exited the train.

This was going to be fun.

 

\---

 

“Why are you still here, anyway?”

Trevor looked up from the nudie magazine he was reading, its pages sticky and faded. Frowning, he made a big show of surveying their surroundings. They were sitting in a pair of busted lawn chairs on the cracked concrete patio in the backyard-- if you could call a barren, craggy expanse of dirt with flames randomly erupting every few feet a backyard, of course. Soft jazz music emitted from the crackly speakers mounted above them. Between them rested a plastic cooler full of lukewarm Diet Dr. Pepper, The Bad Place’s beverage of choice. He tossed the magazine onto the dirt, its pages getting singed by one of the fires, and pulled out a bottle.

“Didn’t Michael warn you how we do things down here?” He unscrewed the soda and took a long swig.

Eleanor wrinkled her nose. He held out the bottle to her, but she shook her head. _Sucker._

“He said things were bad. Which, okay, dude really forking nailed it.” Her eyes widened. “Fork. _Fork_. Shirt bench ash. What the fork?”

Trevor chuckled. “That kind of language is what kept you out of The Good Place to begin with, you know.”

She groaned, slumping down in her chair. One of its thin vinyl straps snapped, and she slid even further down. “This is The Bad Place. Why can’t I curse?”

“Nah, see, we’ve found that most people who get sent here _want_ to use bad language. So it’s more effectively infuriating that they _can’t_.” He shifted in his chair, leaning closer to her and gesturing to make his point. “It’s one of the only ways that the two Places are alike.”

“Ugh.” Slumped as she was, she could just reach the place where the concrete ended and the faded orange dirt began with the toe of one shoe. She dragged it through the dirt, drawing a sad face. It almost turned Trevor’s smirk into a smile. _Almost._ “You didn’t answer my question.”

He furrowed his brow. “Hmm?”

“Why are you still here?”

“Oh.” He felt a sudden pang of awkwardness, even though duh, what did he care? “Thought you knew.”

“Knew what?”

“You know how The Good Place has soulmates?”

She froze, then slowly turned her head to look at him. “Yeah?” She dragged the word out like she was afraid of its answer. Which, to be fair, she ought to be.

One eyebrow raised, he stretched his arms out, palms up, in a _ta-da_ kind of motion.

“No.”

“Well, we don’t actually _call_ them ‘soulmates’--”

“No.”

“Down here, we call them _foul_ mates--”

“No.”

“And yeah, I _know_ it doesn’t exactly rhyme; It’s a better pun when it’s written down rather than spoken, but you get the gist--”

“Mother _forker_.”

She stood up and stormed inside the house, letting the chair fall onto its back in her wake. Trevor turned to watch her go, but then sat back in his seat with a shrug and took another sip of Diet Dr. Pepper. It tasted flat, just the way he liked it.

 

\---

 

It was hours later before he saw Eleanor again. Apparently her hunger had outweighed her anger, and she met him in the kitchen of the drab house just as he was cooking up a gourmet dinner.

“So, Real-- I mean, other Eleanor-- lived here with you while she was down here?” she asked, perching tentatively on one of the rickety barstools.

Trevor rolled his eyes as he pulled on a green-and-white striped oven mitt. “Ugh, she was the worst. Always suggesting we eat healthy and exercise and shower with water instead of diluted sulfuric acid.” He pulled the pan out of the oven and set it on the countertop. Eleanor’s eyes lit up.

“Pizza rolls!” She looked from the pan of piping hot squares to Trevor, then down at the rolls again. “How can you have pizza rolls here?!”

He scoffed. “How _couldn’t_ we? They’re pure garbage food. That’s all we eat here.” He tilted his head to the side. “Well, that, and rotting horse meat.”  

She looked back up at him hopefully. “Is there ranch dressing?”

“Yeah, but it’s expired.” He pulled the bottle out of the fridge and tossed it to her, pushing a paper plateful of pizza rolls in her direction. She sniffed the dressing and shrugged, squirting a glob onto the plate. A woman after his own heart (if he had one).

They ate in silence for several minutes before Eleanor spoke up, mouth full of cheese and dough. “Thank you for making me pizza rolls.”

He chuckled. “Don’t thank me, thank the preservatives and fat that’re currently clogging up those arteries of yours. Oh yeah, that’s right, we still have heart attacks down here. _You’re welcome._ ” He scraped the remaining pizza rolls from the tray (a little burned on the bottom, like a good pizza roll should be) and slid them onto her plate.

The other Eleanor had _hated_ pizza rolls.

 

\---

 

“So…” Eleanor began. They were sprawled on opposite ends of the leather couch (the kind of leather that stuck to the backs of your thighs and made creaky sounds every time you moved, the kind of couch that never quite let you get comfortable. It was Trevor’s favorite spot in the house). For hours, they’d been watching the only TV channel available in The Bad Place, the one that only showed episodes of Law & Order you’d already seen before. With an exaggerated sigh, he paused the current episode.

“So what?”

“You’re acting like you’re just a regular demon-dude down here. But I thought you were, like, the Michael of this place. Like, in charge.”

He looked down at his hands, then shrugged. “Yeah, well. I’m not. I’m sort of an apprentice. It’s whatever.”

“But you came to The Good Place to switch us back.” She raised her eyebrows. “You wore a _suit_.”

Trevor barked a laugh. “You think the big-shot big-wig demons have time to run the Eleanor Shellstrop shuttle service themselves?”

“You made it sound like all these awful, torturous things were _your_ ideas,” she said, and her incredulous tone was really starting to creep under his skin. “When really, you’re basically a glorified delivery driver!”

“Yeah, well, you don’t have to be the boss to have killer ideas, Elea- _bore_.”

Eleanor rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Jason Jones, 5th grade. He was the first one to come up with that gem. Keep trying, devil-boy.”

“Elea-whore.”

“Kim Grzynski, 8th grade in-school suspension.” She tucked her legs up underneath her on the couch, talking over the creak of the leather. “Do better, demon-spawn.”

Trevor sneered, and crossed his arms over his chest. He opened his mouth a few times before saying anything. “Elea- _core_. Because you’re like a-- like the core of an apple. Gross and garbage-y.”

Smirking, she snatched the remote from between them on the sofa and pressed play just in time for the familiar “ _DUN DUN_.”

“I may be a trash bag full of apple cores, but at least I’m not Beelzebub’s intern.”

She laughed at her own joke, and he glared. He couldn’t wait for her to find out about tomorrow’s baby shower. He hoped it’d be triplets.

 

\---

 

Eleanor had begun to doze on the couch when he sounded an airhorn. She sprung up from her seat, eyes wild.

“Holy forking creep, where did you even get that thing?”

Trevor jerked his head toward the corner of the room, where Bad Janet lounged in an armchair. She waggled her fingers, then disappeared. Eleanor huffed.

“I had _just_ hit REM sleep.”

“Exactly. Expect to be woken up every time you do, ding-a-ling. Want me to show you to your room?”

She ran a hand over her face, then threw her hands up in defeat. “Lead the way.”

He led her through the house to a small bedroom in the back. He’d wanted to set it up like a Medieval dungeon, but WalMart (the only store in The Bad Place) had been sold out of half the torture devices on his list. He’d managed to snag the last bed of nails, but the rest of the furniture in the room was still in boxes. Eleanor eyed it quizzically.

“Ikea,” he supplied helpfully. “Every time you want to use your dresser, your bookcase, what have you, you’ve gotta put it together first. It all resets itself at the end of every day.”

“Well, I don’t have any real possessions or books here, anyway, so,” she said, crossing the room to the row of clown paintings on the far wall. She tugged at one, but he’d nailed them down pretty securely, if he said so himself, and she gave up with a groan. “Fine. I’m used to clowns by now.”

Trevor frowned. Maybe he should replace them with something she hated more?

Eleanor sat gingerly on the bed of nails, grimacing as she laid back. “What, no memory foam pillow?”

“Don’t you just love that feeling of waking up with a crick in your neck? We get that _every morning_ here.”

“Sounds terrific. I’m ecstatic,” she deadpanned, then paused. “The other Eleanor said something about night torture. Any hints as to what I should be expecting?”

“Oh, you know. Chains, whips, being repeatedly burned at the stake.” He took a few steps toward the door, leaning one shoulder on the jamb. “It’s all in your head, of course. But don’t worry; you’ll feel every blistering moment,” he reassured.

With a sigh, she turned over onto her side, facing away from him. “Whatever. I once listened to Nickelback every time I drove anywhere for eight months straight because my radio was broken and my ex-boyfriend left his CD in my car. Tell your bosses I said to do their worst." Her voice grew softer as she began to drift toward sleep. "File it in your next report, ya  _intern,_ " she mumbled.

He studied her for a few moments before slipping out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Trevor went about his evening routine: brushing his teeth with boiling sewer sludge, clipping his toenails in the kitchen, drinking a glass of warm Diet Dr. Pepper to help him sleep. His thoughts kept straying to the woman in the other room, and it wasn’t just because her screams of terror were incredibly distracting.

He tried to watch another episode of Law & Order, but he’d already seen it, of course. Finally, he heaved a giant sigh, snatched one of the cracked leather throw pillows off the couch, and stalked over to her bedroom. He opened the door just enough to toss it in the direction of her bed, figuring she’d notice it eventually. When he got back to the living room, he felt squirmy inside, like bad and good all at once. It felt weird, and he didn't know if he liked it.

But one thing was for forking sure.

He’d never met anyone quite like the _real_ Eleanor Shellstrop in his entire afterlife.


End file.
